Blog Tour Review: A Feast of Serendib by Mary Anne Mohanraj

A Feast of Serndib by Mary Anne Mohanraj

Rating: 4/5

Blurb

Dark roasted curry powder, a fine attention to the balance of salty-sour-sweet, wholesome red rice and toasted curry leaves, plenty of coconut milk and chili heat. These are the flavors of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka was a cross roads in the sea routes of the East. Three waves of colonization—Portuguese, Dutch and British—and the Chinese laborers who came with them, left their culinary imprint on Sri Lankan food. Sri Lankan cooking with its many vegetarian dishes gives testimony to the presence of a multi-ethnic and multi -religious population.

Everyday classics like beef smoore and Jaffna crab curry are joined by luxurious feast dishes, such as nargisi kofta and green mango curry, once served to King Kasyapa in his 5th century sky palace of Sigiriya.

Vegetable dishes include cashew curry, jackfruit curry, asparagus poriyal, tempered lentils, broccoli varai and lime-masala mushrooms. There are appetizers of chili-mango cashews, prawn lentil patties, fried mutton rolls, and ribbon tea sandwiches. Deviled chili eggs bring the heat, yet ginger-garlic chicken is mild enough for a small child. Desserts include Sir Lankan favorites:  love cake, mango fluff, milk toffee and vattalappam, a richly-spiced coconut custard.

In A Feast of Serendib, Mary Anne Mohanraj introduces her mother’s cooking and her own Americanizations, providing a wonderful introduction to Sri Lankan American cooking, straightforward enough for a beginner, and nuanced enough to capture the flavor of Sri Lankan cooking.

Review

I have a slight addiction to cooks so when the chance to review A Feast of Serendib by Mary Anne Mohanraj came up I jumped at the chance, especially as Sri Lankan food is something, I know nothing about and I’m always eager to learn about a new cuisine.

For me a good cookbook has to have three elements,  recipes that I want to cook which don’t contain loads of ingredients and numerous steps,  photographs of the majority of the recipes so I know what I’m aiming for and thirdly be an interesting read where I can learn something about the author, I think A Feast of Serendib has managed to achieved all three of these well.

There is a wide selection of recipes, so you really get a feel for the cuisine, with an emphasis on curried dishes but also recipes for some drinks and desserts which I liked. Many of the recipes call for the use of Sri Lankan curry powder and I’m pleased the author has included a recipe to make my own, apart from the dried curry leaves I already had most of the spices in my cupboards. I’ve not had the chance to make many of the recipes yet but from the few I’ve tried the Fish White Curry and the Tangy Peppered Beef Stew being favourites, just watch out for the peppercorns, my kids also liked the Garlic-Ginger Chicken.

Each recipe has its own photo and a little introduction about the dish which I really liked as t gives more insight into the recipes.  The book also has a detailed introduction which gives a lovely insight into the culture and cuisine of Sri Lanka. I think the author has done a great job with this cookbook and I’m looking forward to trying more recipes very soon.

Thank you so much to the author for sending me a copy to review and to Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to be part of the blog tour.

About the Author

Mary Anne Mohanraj is the author of Bodies in Motion (HarperCollins), The Stars Change (Circlet Press) and thirteen other titles. Bodies in Motion was a finalist for the Asian American Book Awards, a USA Today Notable Book, and has been translated into six languages.  The Stars Change was a finalist for the Lambda, Rainbow, and Bisexual Book Awards.

Mohanraj founded the Hugo-nominated and World Fantasy Award-winning speculative literature magazine, Strange Horizons, and also founded Jaggery, a S. Asian & S. Asian diaspora literary journal (jaggerylit.com). She received a Breaking Barriers Award from the Chicago Foundation for Women for her work in Asian American arts organizing, won an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Prose, and was Guest of Honor at WisCon. She serves as Director of two literary organizations, DesiLit (www.desilit.org) and The Speculative Literature Foundation (www.speclit.org).  She serves on the futurist boards of the XPrize and Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.

Mohanraj is Clinical Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and lives in a creaky old Victorian in Oak Park, just outside Chicago, with her husband, their two small children, and a sweet dog.  Recent publications include stories for George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards series, stories at Clarkesworld, Asimov's, and Lightspeed, and an essay in Roxane Gay’s Unruly Bodies.  2017-2018 titles include Survivor (a SF/F anthology), Perennial, Invisible 3 (co-edited with Jim C. Hines), and Vegan Serendib. http://www.maryannemohanraj.com

Purchase Links:

http://serendibkitchen.com/shop/

https://a-feast-of-serendib.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders